Will Weak Sales Hurt Mattel's Q1 Results

(RTTNews) - Mattel Inc. (MAT) is slated to release its first-quarter numbers after the bell on Wednesday, April 20, with analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimating a loss of $0.07 per share on revenue of $861.08 million.

The leading toymaker has been facing challenges including the impact of the loss of Disney Princess, continued declines in Monster High, some recent softness in American Girl, and continued foreign exchange headwinds. Meanwhile, the company's Barbie, Fisher-Price, Hot Wheels, and Thomas are expected to fill a significant portion of the Disney Princess gap, and also offset continued softness with Monster High.

The company expects a continued unfavorable forex impact for the year 2016. It estimates that currency will impact net revenues by about 2% - 4% and adjusted earnings by a $0.30 - $0.40 per share. The EPS impact is primarily due to continued volatility in key currencies, particularly in Europe and growing emerging markets like Mexico, Brazil and Russia, as well as more challenging hedging economics for the euro in 2016 versus 2015.

In The Last Quarter - Mattel Reported Upbeat Earnings

Mattel surprised Wall Street experts by managing to hold sales steady with last year, despite a significant headwind from currency translation. Meanwhile, cost-cutting initiatives helped boost the bottom line. The company's Fisher-Price and Hot Wheels products helped bolster sales. This helped offset a decline at its American Girl unit.

Fourth-quarter net income was $215.2 million, up from $149.9 million in the same period of last year. Earnings per share grew to $0.63 from $0.44 in last year's fourth quarter.

Excluding one-time items, the company's adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.67. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.61 per share.

Net sales for the period were basically flat with last year, edging up to $2.0 billion compared to $1.99 billion last year. Analysts had projected a decline in sales, with the consensus estimate coming in at $1.91 billion.